Unhygienic high touch surfaces such as countertops and tabletops are a dilemma in the house as well as at the workplace and can pose many health and safety risks. Almost all private households and public facilities such as restaurants, hospitals, cafeterias, prisons, schools, and manufacturing facilities require clean and hygienic food preparation, eating and work areas. Clean and hygienic food preparation, eating and work areas improve health and reduce safety risks.
A recent study released by the University of Arizona at Tucson, identified the kitchen as the most germ-contaminated area in the home. In fact, the University of Arizona study reported that countertops are one of five key “hot zones” or sites with the highest bacteria counts.
Cleaning is usually defined as the removal of foreign matter (e.g. soil, and organic matter) from objects or surfaces. If countertops and tabletops are not properly cleaned, bacteria, viruses and other and germs such as botulism, salmonella, shigella, listeria, campylobacter and hepatitis A, can thrive which poses a potential safety risk. Also, in order to stop infectious diseases before they happen, the Centers for Disease and Control Prevention recommends that people clean and disinfect counters and other surfaces before, during, and after preparing food (especially meat and poultry). Also, it is common knowledge that disinfectants are less effective if used when surfaces are not thoroughly cleaned first. Also, if soiled matter is allowed to bake or dry on a surface, the disinfectant process is even less effective. So it is important to properly clean countertops, tabletops and other high touch surfaces on a regular basis; however, no rapid test that provides real-time feedback currently exists to quickly verify that a proper cleaning has been performed on a high touch surface. As a result, visual inspection is the most relied upon method of inspection (e.g. if it looks clean with the naked eye, it must be clean enough). Unfortunately, the current visual inspection method is not very accurate and many high touch surfaces are left unclean. Countless contaminants are unnoticed and inadvertently left behind and could become a primary food source for bacteria and viruses.
Furthermore, attention to preventing contamination from ever happening in the first place is clearly preferable and having the necessary tools that enable one to monitor contamination is just as important. Even very small amounts of contamination can have dramatic consequences depending upon the environment. Because of this, countertop and tabletop surface cleaning is a necessity.
Cleaning is very important in controlling many issues as evidenced by the 100+ billion dollar U.S. Commercial and Residential Cleaning Market. America purchases many products and cleansing chemicals; however, one shortcoming of current methods is that no matter how much cleaning gets done, the user is never truly assured that the surface is thoroughly contaminate free. Improving the current cleaning procedures and methods used by people and cleaning services is needed.
There's currently no effective method to help with quality control when it comes to measuring particulate matter when inspecting hard high touch surfaces such as countertops and tabletops with the naked eye. There's also no current method to enhance one's ability to visually inspect a surface. Currently, people use the naked eye to aid in detecting contaminants however, unknown to the individuals, the illumination relied upon is often improperly and insufficiently directed onto the surface of interest to effectively detected and/or illuminate small contaminants on the counter/tabletops and other high touch surfaces. In in well-lit room, where lighting is typically dispersed from the ceiling and shines from above the area being inspected and cleaned is not sufficient to notice small particulate matter. The reason they cannot see small contaminants is because of reflective properties of the lighting in a particular room setting. When relying on light to see small contaminants, you need light to properly reflect off of the contaminants in order to see them. For example, when reflecting light, even if you allow a lot of light into the room, the amount of light reflected off of the contaminants is too small and cannot compete with the amount of light scattered about the entire room. And this inhibits you from seeing the dirt/dust.
Even if a bright light is directed straight “down” at a high touch surface, both the surface and the contaminants reflect the same bright light back towards the user's eyes, resulting in the in ability to identify and view many small contaminants on the high touch surface.
Prior methods used for detecting contaminants on high touch hard surfaces are not very effective. For example, the common “white glove” test only spot checks a small, trivial area directly underneath where the fingertip contacts the surface. As a result, numerous areas are never even tested because it is too cumbersome and not practical to swipe an entire surface with a “white glove.” Also, often the contaminants are tiny, transparent or camouflaged (e.g. clear plastic, glass and crumbs, hair) and are hard to detect on a “white glove” inspection. Another example of a prior method used to detect contaminants on high touch hard surfaces is an adenosine triphosphate test (ATP). Unfortunately, this test swabs and provides feedback pertaining to the level of cleanliness of only the small area or surface that was directly swabbed. As a result, ATP would not be used to rapidly detect contaminants over an entire hard surface (example—inspect the entire countertop). Also, because of its reliance on natural light, ceiling lights, wall lights, table lamps, chandeliers, etc., the current visual inspection method with the “naked eye” is also not very effective for locating small particulate matter on hard surfaces. This is because the light relied upon is too diffused, not focused and not directed at an appropriate angle in order to effectively illuminate small particulates and contaminants such as dirt and dust particles. Lastly, these current methods only actually help users to identify small amounts of particulate manner (if that) and therefore do not afford users with the opportunity to take steps to properly remove most of many of the contaminants from the environment.
Removal of contaminants is the goal of all cleaning practices and is a very important step in the cleaning process. Therefore, there is a need for a method and device that can be easily used to quickly and thoroughly detect contaminants over entire areas of high touch hard surfaces and help avoid many health and safety risks caused by the contaminants. There is also a need for a method and device that can be used to enhance the naked-eye or visual assessment method of inspecting high touch hard surfaces.
The present invention overcomes these drawbacks and fills these and other needs.